You aren't going to believe this...Mycoplasma/Lo/XMRV

I can't take credit for this. (A kind ME patient was discussing this), so I had a little look myself and thought I'd share. I now remember seeing this ages ago on the internet and forgot about it. Yet now it becomes relevant, all of a sudden.

Dr Shyh-Ching Lo has teamed up with Dr Alter and the FDA for this XMRV replication study.
Dr Shyh-Ching Lo is from the FDA lab in Bethesda, Washington, USA.

So what?

Now unless this guy has a body double MD & Phd with the same name working in the same state, our FDA buddy is the same 'Dr Lo' who is a US Army scientist who's co patented weaponised mycoplasma with the US Army bio warfare dept. (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington).

Mycolplasma's are suspected in some circles to the cause of AIDS and other immune supressive illnesses, *cough* XMRV (HGRV), *cough CFS*.......

So what?

Well what if you grabbed an immuno supressive illnesses and gave it to the US Army? Err WTH?

novel pathogenic mycoplasma isolated from patients with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and its use in detecting antibodies in sera of AIDS patients, patients with AIDS-related complex (ARC) or patients dying of diseases and symptoms resembling AIDS diseases. The invention further relates to specific DNA sequences, antibodies against the pathogenic mycoplasma, and their use in detecting DNA or antigens of the pathogenic mycoplasma or other genetically and serologically closely related mycoplasmas in infected tissue of patients with AIDS or ARC or patients dying of symptoms resembling AIDS diseases. The invention still further relates to a variety of different forms of vaccine against mycoplasma infection in humans and/or animals.

Well if you read it, then you'd be able to see where I got the information. From the US patent office on the link I posted.

It states regarding Dr Lo, ''The invention described herein was made in the course of work under a grant or award from the United States Department of the Army.''

Therefore he was contracted by them and is/was employed at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, as I posted too.

So my point is, it's very strange someone involved in germ warfare weapons happens to get involved in ME/CFS research at this critical time in history and unique also.
His knowledge is the reason, but are there are other factors.

Well if you read it, then you'd be able to see where I got the information. From the US patent office on the link I posted.

It states regarding Dr Lo, ''The invention described herein was made in the course of work under a grant or award from the United States Department of the Army.''

Therefore he was contracted by them and is/was employed at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, as I posted too.

So my point is, it's very strange someone involved in germ warfare weapons happens to get involved in ME/CFS research at this critical time in history and unique also.
His knowledge is the reason, but are there are other factors.

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You could help me save a lot of time and energy if you just told me where i can find that passage and i don't have to read it all
I saw the information about the grant and posted it, but i don't have a problem with that. As far as i know the US DOD or whatever it's called does a lot research, respectively funds it. I'm not sure now, but i think Dr. Klimas has done studies that were at least to some part funded by some military source, but i might be wrong and it was someone else.
Please show me where it says that he

is/was employed at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

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. If you don't i would have to go through all of it and if you already know where it says that, it's really not necessary. I'd do the same for you, too :innocent1:

I think this interpretation of the patent is a little dramatic and probably not true. I went to the abstract. It looks like he identified a strain of mycoplasma and hoped to use it as a vaccine. Just because he was funded by the army doesn't mean it was for a weapon! I searched the abstract for the word "weapon" and it was not there.

I've read other things regarding Dr. Lo and biological warfare. While much is speculative, I suspect there are elements of truth in all of this. While I was thrilled to hear about Dr. Alter being involved with the NIH/FDA confirmation of XMRV, I was shocked to see Dr. Lo's name surface. I'm still trying to figure out his connection to all this. If I find the information I had earlier, I will post.

In the meantime, I checked out the link to the book: The Extremely Unfortunate Skull Valley Incident [Paperback]

Product Description

In 1973, as the Watergate scandal was becoming public knowledge, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered that major documents relating to President Nixon's 'War on Cancer' be collected and destroyed. There was something in these documents dealing with the "formulation, the development and the retention of" illegal biologicals that were used to wage war and experiment widely on Third World populations, that must be hidden from the world.

It is now evident that the "illegal biologicals" he referred to included the pathogenic agents which have led to the AIDS epidemic and other world health crisis.

In The Extremely Unfortunate Skull Valley Incident the authors trace history of the secret war against and the terrible experiments performed upon their own citizens as well as the Third World populations. But Skull Valley does more than that. In their research the father-son team discovered the links between AIDS and many other diseases now increasing dramatically worldwide. Chief among these is myalgic encephalomyelitis/fibromyalgia dismissively labelled " chronic fatigue syndrome" by the government researchers.

In addition to AIDS and ME/FM the Scotts also demonstrate the etiological links to other neurosystemic degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, diabetes, schizophrenia, Crohn's-colitis, etc. All are said to be "of no known cause and having no known cure". Researchers Donald and William Scott have discovered that there is a "known cause" and there may well be a cure.

The cause is a little known organism called the "mycoplasma" which has the capacity to access genetically pre-disposed cells and to destroy them by up-taking pre-formed sterols. This process is the "degeneration" which characterizes all of the diseases under study. When the cells of the endocrine system are destroyed by a sufficient concentration of mycoplasmas, the balance of the physiological balance is altered and the immune system loses its ability to defend the infected victim, and co-factors such as the human immune-deficiency virus (HIV), and those with cause pneumonia, are free to have their way, leading to full-blown AIDS.

About the Author

Donald W. Scott was born in Wiarton, Canada in 1924. He served in Canada's wartime navy and later graduated from the University of Toronto (BA), Guelph University (MSc) and Laurentian University (MA). He is the President of the Common Cause Medical Research Foundation and is an Adjunct Professor of the Institute for Molecular Medicine. He edits The Journal of Degenerative Diseases and able magazine. Mr.Scott married the late Edith Goody of Cobourg in 1946 and has eight children. He is presently married to Cecile Marie Courtemanche, and resides in Sudbury, Canada.

William L.C. Scott was born in Toronto, Canada in 1955. He graduated from Laurentian University in 1982 with a Double Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science. Mr. Scott lives in Ottawa where he is the founder and President of Executive Services Limited. He has two children, Krysten and Alexander. In addition to his researching the mycoplasma and its role in world health he is also very active with the shared parenting/shared grandparenting rights of children of divorce.

Wow! Nice find Sunshine. The mycoplasma research is far too close to the main line of the conspiracy theory version of events to be ignored, and I agree with JT that there may very well be something to be unearthed in this area.

At the same time, I'd encourage anyone going down that road to keep a very open mind indeed. Conspiracy theorists often tend to ignore lots of equally likely possibilities and assume one version of events. I would look at it like this: secret biological weapons research has been a reality, globally, for a long time, and it's implausible to deny that. However, beyond that, we really don't know what's going on beyond the surface of what we can glean. We tend to forget quite easily that there are many nation states who have been involved in such research. We also tend to forget that sometimes Defence research really can be just as much about defence as attack. As in any arms race, the justification is bound to be that if other people are doing it, we'd better look into it too...

So I don't see any reason (based on the information in this thread) to assume anything about what Dr Lo's involvement in mycoplasma research or in CFS implies. Clearly he has a research specialism in relevant areas, and in many areas of science one of the big funders is the defence department, taking a punt on new technologies of interest. I detest the idea of patenting organisms and genes, but this is how scientists protect their IP so that doesn't sound too unusual either. He co-patented a novel mycoplasma, I see no evidence suggesting the 'weaponised' bit. It looks like his work on those "related MLVs" is going to really deepen the picture and add to our understanding of XMRV significantly.

So I really hope people don't jump on the guy, or jump to any conclusions. Lots of defence funding goes on and it really doesn't necessarily imply very much about the work or about the researcher, most of the time.

Still...about that weird novel mycoplasma found in AIDS patients and patented by the US defence dept...so have they licenced a test for that then?...

THE DOCTOR'S WORLD; Unusual Microbe, Once Dismissed, Is Not Taken More Seriously

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
EVIDENCE suggests that a mysterious microbe, whose discovery three years ago was dismissed as a finding of no significance, can cause disease among AIDS patients and even kill people not infected with the AIDS virus. Laboratory tests hint that several antibiotics could control the microbe, but this and other findings need to be confirmed.

Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo, a scientist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, discovered the microbe in 1986 but first thought it was an unknown virus.

Now, after more research in collaboration with scientists at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Lo says the microbe is a mycoplasma. Discovered a century ago in plants, mycoplasmas are the smallest and simplest free-living organisms. They are classified between bacteria and viruses, but are closer to bacteria. Members of the mycoplasma group are known to cause pneumonia and other infections. Dr. Lo calls his microbe Mycoplasma incognitus and says it closely resembles M. fermentans, which has only rarely been reported to cause human infection. French researchers are now trying to determine whether the two are truly different.

After Dr. Lo's earlier reports, several experts said they believed he had found a mycoplasma, not a virus. But the scientists dismissed its importance, suggesting that it was a harmless organism that had somehow contaminated laboratory samples. Some scientists still believe the findings reflect a contaminant.

Dr. Lo has published several papers on the microbe in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, some after other journals rejected them.

In an interview, Dr. Lo said his team almost dropped the research because of frustration, criticism and a lack of Government support. But last month, prompted by Dr. Lo's latest reports and criticism that it was ignoring his work, the National Institutes of Health held a meeting in San Antonio to listen to Dr. Lo.

''We have an open mind and we are trying to see if we can settle this one way or the other over the next several months,'' said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who heads the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ''If it is an important pathogen, then let's see what we can do about it. And if not, let's move on.''

The meeting was led by Dr. Joel B. Baseman, a mycoplasma expert at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio. He said the participants were ''very impressed with the quality of science that Dr. Lo's group displayed.''

''The pathology data was solid and convinced us that the agent is in the tissues,'' Dr. Baseman said. The ability of M. incognitus to cause a fatal wasting disease in monkeys and mice persuaded most participants that the microbe ''has the potential to cause disease in humans,'' Dr. Baseman said, although solid proof is lacking.

From autopsy specimens in 22 of 32 AIDS patients, Dr. Lo's team found evidence that M. incognitus damaged the brain, liver and other tissues. The microbe was detected in the placentas of two mothers with AIDS.

Dr. Lo also reported finding M. incognitus in samples from six military personnel from different geographic areas who were not infected with the AIDS virus. The men and women, who were from 29 to 40 years old, died one to seven weeks after developing a flu-like illness and persistent fever. In each case, military physicians were unable to identify the cause of death.

But Dr. Lo later discovered the mycoplasma in samples from the patients and determined that it was probably the cause of death.

Unlike most other infections, the one apparently caused by M. incognitus does not strike a particular organ but affects many tissues. For unknown reasons, the body does not mount its usual immune response, perhaps because of special biological properties of the microbe. No simple, practical test exists to detect M. incognitus infection in blood and other specimens. In particular, M. incognitus cannot be grown in cultures using specimens from sick people, the way staph and other microbes are. Dr. Lo said one reason he did not initially believe his microbe was a mycoplasma was because he had trouble growing it with standard methods.

Dr. Baseman said Dr. Lo never would have picked up the agent without a new technique known as polymerase chain reaction. By vastly multiplying fragments of nucleic acids from a microbe in a few hours, the technique can identify microorganisms that otherwise would be impossible to detect.

Because of the microbe's elusiveness, researchers are finding it difficult to confirm the findings and to determine whether the microbe is an important cause of illness in the general population.

Dr. Lo was criticized earlier this year when he did not release key substances involved in his experiments to other scientists. But Dr. Lo explained that about a year ago he learned that what he had been calling a virus was probably a mycoplasma. To give the substances to other investigators then would have compelled him to tell them that the microbe was probably a mycoplasma, a disclosure he did not want to make until it was reported in a scientific paper then waiting to be published. He said he has since distributed the substances to investigators. Researchers have begun organizing studies in several centers to determine how often M. incognitus occurs among people infected with the AIDS virus, those with other illnesses and healthy people. An important question is at what stage of an AIDS infection M. incognitus appears.

If infection occurs early, it could suggest that the microbe helps, or even causes, the progression from a symptomless infection with the AIDS virus to disease. If the infection develops after other AIDS symptoms appear, it could indicate that it is a secondary invader that causes an opportunistic infection.

Doctors also hope to develop a preventive treatment, as they have for pneumocystis pneumonia, another opportunistic infection in AIDS.

Laboratory tests show that M. incognitus fails to respond to erythromycin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat other mycoplasma infections. But M. incognitus appears susceptible to tetracycline and other antibiotics in test tubes. Studies are needed to determine if antibiotics work in people infected with M. incognitus.

Another goal is to learn what factors apparently allow M. incognitus to cause widespread infection without provoking a response from the immune system. If the factors can be identified, therapies might be developed to boost the immune response.

No one knows how M. incognitus is spread. Family members and people in close contact with infected individuals did not themselves become infected. The interest now being shown in M. incognitus is vindication of sorts for Dr. Lo. The controversy over his findings stems largely from the way he originally identified the microbe, using a technique known as transfection. The technique involves taking DNA from a microbe and then using electrical devices, chemicals and other methods to insert the genetic material into a cell, where it undergoes replication.

The technique is often used to detect viruses, but generally does not work for bacteria. Dr. Baseman said it remains a mystery why the technique worked for mycoplasma.

Dr. Lo developed immunological techniques tailored to detect the organism that he found by transfection. He also used the immunologic techniques to help identify the microbe in the autopsies. In addition, he identified it using electron microscopy. For unknown reasons, Dr. Lo's team can grow in cultures the M. incognitus obtained by transfection.

Asked if M. incognitus by itself could cause a disease resembling AIDS, if not AIDS itself, Dr. Lo said: ''That's a good question. I don't know, and it will take a lot more work and time to answer it.''

Photos: Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology discovered a microbe and later determined it was a mycoplasma. (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology); An electron micrograph of Mycoplasma incognitus in the empty extracellular space in tissue taken from the liver of a person with AIDS.

Mycoplasma fermentans (strain incognitus) is a recently discovered organism that was first isolated from patients with AIDS. An in vitro study showed that infection with this mycoplasma markedly enhanced human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) cytocidal effects on CD4+ lymphocytes. Also, because mycoplasmal infections in many animal hosts can suppress defense mechanisms, it has been postulated that this organism could serve as a cofactor in AIDS. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a chronic debilitating illness characterized by sudden onset of a "flu-like" syndrome (typically with symptoms of upper and lower respiratory tract infection) followed by at least 6 months, and often years, of debilitating fatigue, low-grade fevers, respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms, cognitive impairment and mood disorders, and other symptoms. On immunologic, virological, endocrinologic, and neurological testing, a variety of modest objective abnormalities have been reported; however, no satisfactory diagnostic test has been developed, and no etiologic agent has been identified.

Researchers often try to patent new pathogens that they discover. There is nothing wrong with that.

This might be positive news for the XMRV research community. Given that Dr Lo has worked finding mycoplasmas (ultra tiny bacteria), perhaps he was recruited for his skills in finding extremely small pathogens. That would make sense in a search for a gamma size virus.

can someone lay out in easy to read wording what the conspiracy theory is? i don't get it? are you saying Lo invented mycoplasma?

also, one above article stated this , "Asked if M. incognitus by itself could cause a disease resembling AIDS, if not AIDS itself, Dr. Lo said: ''That's a good question. I don't know, and it will take a lot more work and time to answer it.''"

The Dr Lo article is from 1990 I notice. Progress is really slow in the real world.

IMO it doesn't necessarily mean that Dr Lo is reponsible for anything, just that he is an extremely good, highly trained, painstaking scientist of the highest calibre. Perhaps in fact exactly the sort of scientist that both the military and/or a federal agency might want to employ and just the sort of researcher I might want on my side with the lateral thinking and focused intelligence required to unravel an illness like CFS/ME (or whatever it turns out to be). It might be that scientists employed by the military regularly move sideways into federal jobs at some point (or vice versa).

I've read documents about Chem Trails, Mycoplasma and conspiracy theories in the past and got v freaked out, but went into denial and didn't take them seriously. However, 14 years down the line of ill health and having gone from medical pillar to post spending tens of thousands of pounds/dollars on consultations, tests, scans etc etc (exactly as the document suggests) and receiving absolutely no insight or health-improving benefits whatsoever (I also had a head start as I come from a medical family) - the contents of the document are beginning to look more and more like the only rational explanation.

If these illnesses do turn out to have a bio weapon engineered basis, I do hope the inventors had the commonsense to create a vaccine for themselves at the same time! Otherwise, how else could they be so confident that they might not also get it, or wipe out life on the entire planet eventually? I maintain that IMO there is no such thing as a totally secure bio weapons lab - just think 'mosquito' (or flea, louse, tick, mite ..) Plus once one member of the population has it, if its infectious - that's it. After all, we live for quite a long time - decades in fact, milling around slowly in the general population ..

If it really is an engineered stealth pathogen then I can personally vouch that yes, it is VERY effective - we all can! Yes, it completely disables the operator - well done. Is this truly a world-class devastatingly effective bioweapon that sends the recipient into 7 degree of hell? - yes it is - great job! etc etc. Now just imagine what could be achieved if all that creativity and money could be focused for the benefit of the human race instead.

Unfortunately, as we are apparently tax revenue-generating cash cows for the Government, who are now completely unable to fulfil our roles, its turning out to be a pretty costly experiment.

I don't see any new information here. Mycoplasma are one of many types of pathogens that have been investigated as a possible cause of ME/CFS. Garth Nicholson did a lot of work on it. Mycoplasma are common in the population and were found in greater numbers in ME/CFS patients. Failing to find evidence of causation, I think they eventually decided it was yet another example of opportunistic infection resulting from a deranged immune system. But back in 1991 when this patent was issued, they were looking at mycoplasma as a possible co-pathogen with HIV in causing AIDS disease symptoms. Likewise with ME/CFS. They were finding elevated numbers of mycoplasma, or odd strains of mycoplasma, in some immune disease patients and asking "Why?"

Because Garth Nicholson's research lab is near me, I looked into volunteering to be a research subject, but by that time his ME/CFS research had kind of petered out and he had gone on to other mycoplasma research, such as with Gulf War Disease.

The possibility of mycoplasma being a co-pathogen or trigger with a retrovirus is intriguing, but not new or earth-shattering. And I don't see what's surprising about finding that an eminent government microbiologist would have been studying mycoplasma twenty years ago. It looks like Dr Lo identified a particular strain of mycoplasma fermentans incognitus and developed a probe for it. I don't see what the big deal is. Dr Lo wasn't BORN eminent; he had to have been studying something twenty years ago, why not mycoplasma?

It may be that with the discovery of another human retrovirus someone will want to look again at what role mycoplasma might play in neuroimmune disease or oncogenisis. It would probably be a good thing to consider while they're trying to work out the mechanisms of causation, along with other possible co-pathogens.

That's amazing - how can someone patent something that they haven't created? Surely that's like trying to patent tigers or something! I thought patents were just for inventions, not discoveries. Am I missing something obvious?

Although I don't want to contribute to conspiracy theories, in the interests of full disclosure and free discussion, here's something I came across while reviewing my old Garth Nicholson/mycoplasm files:

From Written Testimony of Dr. Garth L. NicolsonSpecial Oversight Board for Department of Defense Investigations of Gulf War Chemical and Biological IncidentsU. S. Senate Hart Office Building SH-216November 19, 1998

It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's the part that mentions Dr Lo:

The recent comments of Mr. Bernard Rostker, Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses and more recently Assistant Secretary of the Army, at the 17th Town Hall meeting on Gulf War Illnesses at Camp Pendleton on 23 September 1998 indicate that the DoD is still trying to bury the issue of infectious diseases and GWI. According to the comments of Mr. Rostker as related by two participants (S. and L. Dudley of San Diego, CA) in their TV interview after the meeting, "Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo, Armed Forces pathologist, is going to publish that he was not able to reproduce Nicolson's results and that Nicolson was not cooperating in terms of not obtaining those results in the medical community and in fact was hampering it." This is not the truth. In fact, two commercial laboratories that we assisted in setting up similar clinical tests, one in California and one in New Jersey, have confirmed our mycoplasma results in Gulf War Illness patients. It seems that only the AFIP cannot apparently repeat the results, which is why we were awarded a small contract to train them in January of this year. They have never submitted their data for peer-review, even after several years. We have published our data [9-11, 20-22], and we have also published that blood for analysis must be at refrigerator temperatures and prepared very quickly in order to prevent mycoplasma deterioration [11]. GWI patients have told me (and Dr. Lo even admitted to this to patients) that the AFIP does not store blood properly, and we claim that they do not do the tests properly, which could be why the DoD has never obtained accurate data on mycoplasmal infections in GWI patients.

The DoD pronouncements on the lack of chronic infections (Mycoplasma, Brucella, Coxiella, etc.) in GWI and CFS patients flies in the face of published data from university and nongovernmental laboratories. Mr. Rostker stated that "the DoD/VA had initiated a program with Dr. Nicolson to train labs on his testing techniques but were unable to get Dr. Nicolson to send blood samples as he promised to do and were unable to identify the techniques he used and were unable to find the mycoplasma in the blood." These are complete distortions and untruths. The laboratories involved in these studies are using blood from NIH not my laboratory, and these laboratories can and have been detecting mycoplasmal infections using the techniques that we taught them. Why would high officials use untruths and distortions in an effort to cast nongovernmental scientists in an unfavorable light. Was this done to cover up a completely inadequate government response to GWI? And why are they still going to such great lengths to cover this up more than 8 years after Dessert Storm? We have been able to help thousands of GWI patients after years of suffering obtain a diagnosis and treatment and recover from their illnesses, and these same patients were not even given a diagnoses or effective treatments by DoD or VA medical facilities. If we are wrong, then why are our patients doing better than the DoD/VA patients with GWI? Why then is the DVA willing to allocate more than $12,000,000 to conduct a cooperative clinical trial based entirely on our diagnosis and treatment protocol for treating mycoplasmal infections?

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One reason I'm hesitant about posting this is that HIV denialists have made more of it than I think it warrants. It may be that mycoplasma will turn out to be a cofactor in pathogenisis with retroviruses, but I think it's an illogical jump to say that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.